Hey folks, Harry here... Somehow, this Pyul guy has written 40 zillion words about A CINDERELLA STORY... I think he went to it because he'd dulled all the razor blades on his wrists and wanted the exit door to life, which this film beckons audiences to step through. Read about the trip to the otherside....
A Cinderella Story. Come on. What did you really expect? You saw the trailer. You know the type. Most of the talkbackers even now are asking themselves: Why even review it? As the Hulkster might say: Because it's got it coming, brother. Because it's got it coming.
Now before any of you film apologists start trying to defend this film with the "But it's for little girls" argument know now that this is exactly what's got me so pissed off. First of all, just because it's for little girls doesn't mean you can skimp on the quality. Sure, you can get away with more as children are much more forgiving of quality issues - but as a children's filmmaker you should ask yourself: What message am I sending? What are the kids going to walk away with.
Look at Rodriguez's Spy Kids films. Love them or hate them, the overall message of all three films is solid: there is nothing more important than family, and together there is nothing a family can't overcome if they rely on one another. And Rodriguez never for a moment betrays that message for the sake of entertainment. Never. Look at the Princess Diaries, Secondhand Lions, hell, The Iron Giant for that matter. All of these are great modern kids films with strong messages that manage to be equally as entertaining.
Well, what infuriates me about 'A Cinderella Story' is that it actually seems to TRY to have a message, but apparently for the sake of entertainment, they undercut their message altogether and manage to turn out one of the most shallow, detestable, loathsome pieces of monkey spunk this side of 'Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen'.
Now, sure, it's not like Cinderella is exactly the greatest of stories when it comes to morality plays. The moral is that if you're kind enough, dutiful enough and ultimately pitiable enough, someone will come along and feel bad enough about it to give you your break so you can run off and marry your prince. Yeah, not exactly the foundation feminism was built on. But that's not my beef with this film at all. Outdated though the ideals are, Cinderella is a classic tale and one that can still warm the heart of even the most cynical of rotten bastards. Were this simply what 'A Cinderella Story' was attempting here, I'd have no beef with it. However, 'A Cinderella Story' sets out to tell it's own story - to put a modern twist on a classic tale - and in doing so, manages to fuck the classic up entirely.
Now high school movies are a tough thing to get right primarily because high school means so many things to so many different people. For some, it was the best time of their life - a time when their popularity flourished, when members of the opposite sex wanted to date them and members of the same sex wanted to be them. It was a time these people spend the rest of their lives wishing they could go back and relive. For others it was a time they'd rather spend a week in the Gulag then think about - a time when they went unnoticed, or worse, were noticed for all the wrong reasons. John Hughes built his career on forcing these two groups together and leveling the playing field. In films like The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles, Hughes put the awkward teens in the same room with the teens so perfect that the light seems to gleam off of their teeth and audiences still to this day delight with their antics. Even a couple of the modern crop of teen films have managed to recapture that magic - Can't Hardly Wait, 10 things I Hate About You, and The Girl Next Door to name a few. Hell, Legally Blonde turned the entire formula upside down, by making the 'popular' style girl the outcast in a school of nerds, and made it work.
But for every high school film that works there is a handful that just don't - and 'A Cinderella Story' is one of those sad attempts. First of all this film fails in it's casting of current bubble gum smacking teen sensation, Hillary Duff. She sings, she dances, she 'acts'. She's the Skipper doll for a new generation, the Brittany now that Brittany is following Madonna down the yellow brick road to Slutsville. Isn't she perfect? Well, if she could actually act, that would be something, but sadly, she can't. Hillary Duff strikes me as that girl in the high school play that's just so sweet, so well meaning, and so adorable that no one has the balls to tell her just how bad she sucks. Sure, kids love her, but in this day and age kids are natural born consumers who will buy anything put in front of them. Take a child into a store with nothing kid oriented whatsoever, put five dollars in their hand and I guaran-fucking-tee they'll walk out with something. Hillary's the product, and the kids are buying, so she gets to be Cinderella.
But the Cinderella of our story is a geek; one of the unnoticed, mocked, tread upon geek masses. Let that roll around your noggin for a second. Try, just as hard as you might, to picture Hillary Duff as a geek. And no, they don't dress her down with so much as 'a ponytail and glasses' as Not Another Teen Movie pointed out about modern Ugly Duckling stories. She looks just as she always does: Perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect clothes. Barbie's little sister (or cousin, I mean who the fuck with a Y chromosome really knows who the fuck Skipper is anyway?) She is by no definition whatsoever...a geek. Sure, she's a straight A student. But all the good looking straight A students at my High School had their own crowd - and they were far from 'geeks.' But there she is, Hillary Duff, all hairspray and Max Factor, pretending she knows who the fuck Tennison is to convince us that she's some sort of social misfit. Oh yeah, she's got a geeky actor 'Jon Cryer "Ducky" clone' Best friend to help convince us of her social inadequacies...but nothing else.
But is there anything wrong with that? Really? Well, no, not really. I guess beautiful people can be social outcasts too. I mean, we can't hate them for being beautiful and if you can't identify with Hillary Duff, who can you identify with?
And then there's our story, the one you all know about a girl whose father has died, leaving her with a cunt of a stepmother and two hideous stepsisters. But here, they modernize the story, making the prince the 'heir' to a carwash empire with a father forcing him to attend USC rather than his dream college, Princeton, which it so happens, our heroine dreams of attending herself. And thus the two meet, in a Princeton Chatroom, and anonymously fall in love ala 'The Shop Around the Corner' or as it was remade in the same vein 'You've got Mail.' It turns out the guy our Cinderella is in love with physically (he's so dreamy, by the way, and the captain of the football team) is also the Tennyson quoting writer wannabe that our Cinderella has fallen in love with through E-mail.
So all in all, the message becomes what matters is what's on the inside, and as long as you have the courage to be true to yourself you can accomplish whatever you dream. Isn't that nice? Isn't that a great message? Yeah, you know what, that's a pretty swell message, and I can get behind that. But, you see, my problem is this: That ain't the fucking message. Sure, it's the message serial schlock director Mark Rosman and first time screenwriter Leigh Dunlap SEEM to be spoonfeeding the kids, but it ain't what's in the jar.
You see, there's a character I've yet to tell you about, a character so seemingly trivial that he's given only two scenes in the film, and I'll be damned if I could remember his name. But I remember him, and I remember virtually every line he utters. You see, this guy - he's a real geek. He wears a t-shirt that reads "Vader was framed" and speaks with pretentious psuedo-medieval airs in a vain attempt to woo little miss Hillary Duff. At first he's easy to shrug off, he's a moment of comic relief. No big whoop. But then he shows up at the dance (in the only humorous scene in the movie) dressed as Neo, doing what he refers to as 'The Mating Dance of Zion.' Some funny stuff. He even answers to someone's quip of 'Mr. Anderson' speaking the geek equivalent of Shibboleth. But when Hillary Duff mistakes him for 'nomad' (the handle of our would be prince) the movie goes to complete shit thematically speaking. You see, the moment Cinderella 'realizes' the boy she's fallen in love with through e-mail, the boy she's swooned over and soiled many a panty over, is really an unattractive loser geek who no doubt has his own hand made Boba Fett costume at home - well, little miss geek girl, little miss 'what's important is what's on the inside', little miss 'I just want to be loved for who I am' - she almost vomits in a half retching, half fainting maneuver played for laughs. You see kids, what's on the inside is only important if what's on the outside is beautiful too. When Hillary finds out her dreamboy bohunk is really the captain of the football team, the same guy who's cruelly stolen her parking space, consistently ignored her, and after spending an hour with her with only a small feathered mask between them to conceal her identity, he couldn't pick her out of a fucking line up (mother fucker goes through the yearbook THREE times looking for her, and after being in school with her for at least four years STILL doesn't recognize her) -even after having a conversation with her later in the film STILL isn't tipped off - well when it's him it's perfect. Because he sees her for who she really is, right? Hardly.
So maybe you're thinking because I'm writing for Ain't it Cool, I must be a sweaty, overweight, pimple faced, Jedi wannabe who hasn't ever been laid without paying for it. Maybe that's why I'm bitter and I should just leave the beautiful people alone. Maybe I'm just pining for the glory days of geek cinema when the nerds could overcome the jocks and get the girl. Maybe I just wanted Anthony Michael Hall to pop the shit out of Emilio Estavez and get the girl in the end. Think what you will, but the message is there. And it's what they're selling our kids.
So all this talk of theme and message aside, how's the film? Pretty much as shitty as you'd expect. I mean this film really is geared toward 13 year old girls, 45 year old men in raincoats and no one in-between. If you like your lead actors plastic, your high schools sanitized and ethnically purified, your love stories trite, your dialog pathetic and your humor involving the 80th rehash of Botox jokes, then this is the movie for you.
As mentioned, Hillary Duff is positively uncharismatic as the lead. Add to that her step mother (played by the revolting Jennifer Coolidge who frighteningly looks like a Barbie Doll left in the sun to melt) and her two step sisters also played for the grossout factor (complete with fart jokes.) While they accomplish the loathsomeness of the characters, they do so only through the actresses genuine lack of charisma and the retarded dialog they're given. The only performance of note is Dan Byrd, who isn't totally unlikable as Cinderella's best friend. Sadly, he's given only a few minutes of glory, and given such a cheesy cop out ending that he'll hardly make a mark with this role. And his Heroine-chic girlfriend is no Kristy Swanson...hell, she's not even Zooey Deschanel from the wonderful 'The Good Girl' from which her character was shamelessly ripped off from.
No, there is no merit whatsoever to 'A Cinderella Story', but you probably knew that. You've seen the trailer, you know what you're in for. If you've got kids, and they're begging to see this, drop them off like good little consumers and find something better to do with your life. You've earned it.
Pyul Mactackle
